Main description:

Using a consistent Skinnerian perspective, Behavior Analysis and Learning: A Biobehavioral Approach, Sixth Edition provides an advanced introduction to the principles of behavior analysis and learned behaviors, covering a full range of principles from basic respondent and operant conditioning through applied behavior analysis into cultural design. The textbook uses Darwinian, neurophysiological, and biological theories and research to inform B. F. Skinner's philosophy of radical behaviorism.

The sixth edition expands focus on neurophysiological mechanisms and their relation to the experimental analysis of behavior, providing updated studies and references to reflect current expansions and changes in the field of behavior analysis. By bringing together ideas from behavior analysis, neuroscience, and epigenetics under a selectionist framework, this textbook facilitates understanding of behavior at environmental, genetic, and neurophysiological levels. This "grand synthesis" of behavior, neuroscience, and neurobiology roots behavior firmly in biology. The book includes special sections, "New Directions," "Focus On," "Note On," "On the Applied Side," and "Advanced Section," which enhance student learning and provide greater insight on specific topics.

This book is a valuable resource for advanced undergraduate and graduate students in psychology or other behavior-based disciplines, especially behavioral neuroscience. For additional resources to use alongside the textbook, consult the Companion Website at www.routledge.com/cw/pierce.

Contents:

1. A Science of Behavior: Perspective, History, and Assumptions 2. The Experimental Analysis of Behavior 3. Reflexive Behavior and Respondent Conditioning 4. Reinforcement and Extinction of Operant Behavior 5. Schedules of Reinforcement 6. Aversive Control of Behavior 7. Operant-Respondent Interrelationships: The Biological Context of Conditioning 8. Stimulus Control 9. Choice and Preference 10. Conditioned Reinforcement 11. Correspondence Relations: Imitation and Rule-Governed Behavior 12. Verbal Behavior 13. Applied Behavior Analysis 14. Three Levels of Selection: Biology, Behavior, and Culture